An artist learning her craft.

alps

So last night I was kicking back watching a film on Netflix. It’s called ‘Meru’ and is about a legendary Himalayan climb on a mountain who’s top is called ‘The Shark’s Fin’

As a young adult, and right through my twenties, I loved walking and climbing in the mountains. I did some walking in the Alps with family when I was 16 and then some tougher climbing routes in Scotland, North Wales and the Breacon Beacons through my twenties with friends. From the very beginning I just adored the simplicity of the thing.

Anyway at 31 I got injured internally while giving birth to my son. It was a neurological injury and consequentially took years and many operations to figure out. Then in my early 40’s I developed a infection which lasted months and gave rise to post infective fibromyalgia. When I had the pelvic problems alone my walking was restricted and I could no longer climb. Once the chronic pain thing happened I began struggling to walk even short distances.

I don’t really miss the climbing nowadays at all – it seems to be too much like hard work(!) but I still have a lot of sympathy for folk who feel driven to get themselves up these tremendous peaks. I was drawn to it by the sensation of climbing itself, the burning of your muscles, the percussive kicking into the ice and the wild isolation, all of which gave me a sense of euphoria. What I do miss now though is walking, the joy of just gambolling about wherever you want.

So this week I painted a picture of a place I visited in the Alps when I was 16. It’s a valley called Val d’Anniviers in Switzerland. (One of my God-Parents was Swiss and lived just outside Geneva with her English husband. I’ve known them all my life. We have holiday’d with them, over there, a few times and they’ve holiday’d over here with us. Very sadly we lost them suddenly in a plane crash in 2011 while they were on holiday in Botswanna.) That holiday in Val d’Anniviers with both our families is my strongest memory of them. I can’t think of the Alps without thinking of them. So this is for them and their surviving daughters who were mine and my sister’s friends growing up.

Here’s the Swiss Tourist Board picture from that valley which I used as a reference (NB: Not my own photography.)

Many tourist type pictures are heavily doctored to make the places look pristine. But this valley really is exactly like that photo. It’s like walking through a real wonderland. What the photo doesn’t show is the freshness of the air up there and the sound of the local cattle and goats with bells around their necks. It’s was a real priviledge to have a go at painting this place.

I sketched out the main forms first (and changed them a bit to give me the feel and shape I wanted)…

Then I made a detailed ink drawing…

After that I played around in Photoshop for a while trying out different colour combinations. My favourite two were these…

I couldn’t decided between them so I painted my final colours as a mix of the two. I painted on different watercolour paper this week as I had some real issues with the paper last week. It seemed to pay off as I had no further problems.

This week I worked on a few smaller fun projects, leaving my bigger painting ‘Love’s Sacrifice’ alone for a bit. My son is doing his exams and I’ve been concentrating on being there for him.

So I began the week looking at some beautiful macro photographs of tiny animals, like this miniscule moth photographed by Johan J Ingles Le Nobel.

I’ve always loved macro photography with a passion. So many beautiful tiny details! Le Nobel’s work is brilliant!

I didn’t intend on sketching this picture and was just playing around in my sketchbook whilst in bed one evening when the beauty of the photograph came into my mind…

So I decided the next day to give it some colour. I used watercolour paints with Prismacolor Pencils over the top.

Here’s the final painting…

I wish I’d got the eyes exactly the right shape as they’re the main feature of this animal’s face. The drawing was ok but successive layers of paint slightly changed the final curve.

Next I drew an ‘Eevee’ which is a little deer Pokemon. (Please note the design of this little guy is created and owned by the Pokemon franchise. I just made a painting of him.) I used gouache for the painting so I could get really bright cartoon-type colours. It was kind of fun!

Then finally I sketched a high alititude landscape in pencil…

I think this would have been more effective if I could have created a greater tonal difference between the foreground and the background. Part of the problem was that my scanner wouldn’t pick up very light pencil for the far mountains unless I darkened them. There seems to be a cut off point where the scanner couldn’t see very light pencil even when it’s obvious to a person’s regular eye sight. I could have darkened the foreground more to cater for this but I didn’t think if it at the time.

I also coloured this picture to see if adding some colour helped. First I added three shades of green to the trees and some basic blue sky lightening towards the top. Then I added yellow to the light areas and purple to the shadows to give the picture a warmed look.